Are you looking for the perfect transitional-weather
crochet sweater? Smoky Silhouettehas the perfect balance of
fun-to-crochet lace and slimming vertical ribbing. As with all of my designs the interesting construction—including sideways
crocheted body and trim for ribbing—makes crocheting this sweater an
enjoyable and engaging experience.

We'll be chatting about the book, patterns, seamless knitting and more! Be sure to tune in, or I'll share the recording/video once it's available. But tune in at noon on the 8th to be personally involved! You may even get to win a copy of the book!

Maybe you've heard? I have a another book, full of seamless sweaters, coming out this fall! It'll be available this November, and is available for pre-order now.

In No-Sew Knits, 20 Flattering finish-free garments I teach you how to knit the perfect sweater with no assembly required. Through clever planning and some clever techniques, projects are shaped and joined during knitting—all without sacrificing the pretty details.No-Sew Knits offers 20 garments that combine construction techniques and on-trend comfortable styling for everyday wear. While many sweaters are based on simple raglan and yoke construction, I take the opportunity to introduce you to a variety of other easier-than-they seem techniques, while keeping the patterns approachable for advanced beginners.

Chapters are focused around the concepts of basic no-sew patterns, interchangeable stitch patterns, cables and lace. The resulting pieces are beautifully constructed garmens that boast eye-catching details: the large focal cable and cowl of the Rejoice Tunic; the cozy foldover collar of the Dreamy Pullover; the delicate lace of the Enchanted Cardi. Each pattern features a Tip section that helps you learn new techniques for customizing your garments.

Pretty and practical, the patterns in No-Sew Knits will teach you a variety of need-to-know skills, building your knitting repertoire as you build your wardrobe.

Stay tuned to learn more about each of the designs in the book, how their constructed and what inspired them.

This is an older post, from like 2006. It's something I've found pretty useful. I was recently sharing my Knitting Maine book with the Metro West Knitters Guild in Needham, MA and this old post came up in conversation. So, here it is again. Fresh and new.

Somehow, this little magic formula found it's way into my brain. It works EVERY
TIME for increasing or decreasing evenly along a certain number of rows.

The first thing you need
to do is figure out your gauge! This won't work if you don't know your
gauge.

The first thing we're going to shape is a sleeve.
With a stitch gauge of 5 sts/inch, figure out how many stitches you will have at the beginning of the shaping.

To do this, multiply 7¾" x 5 sts = 38.75 sts. Of course, we can't have a fraction of a stitch, so based on your stitch pattern, you'll need to round either up or down. I'm going to round down, I'll tell you why in a second. So, there are 38 sts at the cuff of the sleeve.

Now, lets figure out how many stitch there will be at the underarm: 12" x 5 sts = 60. That worked out perfectly, no fractions, and it's an even number. That's why I chose 38 over 39 sts for the cuff. You want to keep the numbers the same, either odd or even.

Now you want to figure out the difference between the two numbers.
60 - 38 = 22.

This tells us that we need to increase a total of 22 stitches to get to 12" from 7¾". Because we will be working our increases on each end of the rows, lets divide this in half so there will be 11 increase rows, with 1 st increased on each end on each row.

But how many rows do we have to increase in?
The whole
length of the sleeve will be 17½" from the cast-on edge to the underarm.
The first 2 inches will be worked without shaping, so we don't want to include
those rows in our increasing. That leaves us to increase in 15½", which
multiplied by the row gauge of 7 is 108.5 rows. Rounded to an even number is: 108 rows.

Now comes the fun part… how often do we work these increase rows?

Step 1: Take the number of rows (108) and divide it by the number of times we will be working an increase row (11):

108 ÷ 11 = 9.818181"
If you get a number that is between 1 and 2, see below **

Step 2: Now, take the two even numbers closest to
this number. In this case they are 8 and 10. I set them up like this to
keep things consistent (See diagram A). These are the row spans that you
will be using, such as increase every 8 rows so many times then every
10 rows so many times.

Now we're going to figure out how many times for
each of them.

Step 3: Multiply the larger of these two numbers (in this case, the 10) by the amount of times we need to increase: 10 x 11 = 110

Step 4: From this number, subtract the total amount of rows you will be increasing in 110 - 108 = 2

Step 5: Then divide that number in half 2 ÷ 2 = 1. Place that number beside the smaller of your two numbers (See diagram B).

Step 6: Now take the total number of increase rows
and subtract the number you're left with in Step 5: 11 - 1 = 10 and
place this number beside the larger of your two numbers in your diagram
(See diagram C)

Step 7: To double check all this to make sure
everything is right: multiply the number on the left by the number on
the right for both the smaller number and the larger number: 8 x 1 = 8
then 10 x 10 = 100 (See diagram D). Then add the two numbers 8 + 100 =
108 rows! Yay, the rows are right!

**If you get a number between 1 and 2 from Step 1 above, continue as follows:
Of course if you get a number that is between 1 and 2, then choosing the even numbers above and below that number won't work. 0 just isn't a number that works in knitting. In this case you'll need to use 1 and 2 rather than 2 even numbers.

You may run into this if you are increasing a lot of stitches in fewer rows.